From: tgpedersen
Message: 58357
Date: 2008-05-04
>Do these 'forest cultures' have names?
>
> --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh
> > <gknysh@> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> > >
> > > > In this case, given that Proto-Slavic was spoken in the Kiev
> > > > culture, the ancestor language of that, spoken in Przeworsk
> > > > and Zarubintsy, would be Proto-Proto-Slavic
> > >
> > > GK: The Kyiv culture was a new beginning. It did
> > > not develop from either Przeworsk or Zarubyntsi,
> > > though it assimilated some carriers thereof.
> >
> > But in that case, as a linguist I would like to know, how did the
> > people of the Kyiv culture go about building this new language,
> > Proto-Slavic?
>
> ****GK: New beginnings are rarely "a nichilo". Now
> that Przeworsk and Zarubyntsi (and of course
> Chernyakhiv)are seen as impossible prime antecedents
> of Slavic material culture, the case for their
> languages being proto-Slavic in whole or in part has
> correspondingly dissipated. Since Kyivan culture has
> strong affinities to the other so-called "forest
> cultures" of eastern Europe correctly identified as
> Baltic,that is also where one should search for the
> prime influences on proto-Slavic. I understand that
> linguists have actually done this for a condiderable
> period (long before the "archaeological shift" re
> Przeworsk/Chernyakhi videntities occurred). The most
> promising approach apparently continues to be the
> view that Baltic and Slavic developed out of
> "Baltoslavic". The linguistic time frame is still
> being discussed, but as a historian I can only note
> that there are no indications of any sort about a
> separate "Slavic" identity earlier than the 2nd c.CE.
> I can say nothing about the length of the "period of
> separation". Only that the process would have been
> internal to earlier "forest cultures" and would not
> have involved either Przeworsk, Chernyakhiv, or
> Zarubyntsi, or the earlier Scythian culture, except
> as, to some extent, "external" catalysts. Only after
> much of Poland and Ukraine had become depopulated due
> to the near disappearance of the Przeworsk and
> Chernyakhiv Germanics did the Slavs move into the
> vacated territories and enter history on a grand
> scale.****